10 Instagram Optimization Tips to Grow Your Account Quickly
Instagram is a great venue to showcase your photos, but it can be a challenge to gain a large amount of attention. With the great number of competing creators on the platform, your page and photos can easily get overshadowed. To help you out, here are 10 Instagram optimization tips to boost your account’s prominence.
1: Switch to a business account
While a personal account will be sufficient for your initial foray into Instagram, switching to a business profile is a good move in the long run. A business profile offers various benefits that will facilitate your account’s growth, like:
- Access to analytics: Instagram’s analytics tools give you detailed insights into the traffic and engagement you are getting.
- Contact buttons: With a business profile, you can add a contact button on your page and set it either for phone, email, or a physical address.
- Additional Stories features: Once you upgrade, you will be able to add links within your Stories and use the “Swipe up for more” feature to direct people to your pages.
These added features give you more flexibility in engaging with new visitors and getting them to eventually follow your page.
Greater promotions
Another major advantage of an Instagram business profile is that you get to boost your content through paid promotions. Turning existing posts into promoted ones is the most common way to take advantage of this. The option lets you increase the reach of your posts without spending too much.
You can also go into full-fledged ads upon making the switch. There are a variety of ad types you can use for engaging visitors in different ways. The site’s advertising rates are also affordable, making them accessible to new accounts.
2. Optimize your profile picture
Having the right kind of profile picture is a good strategy to get people curious about your page. Go for a more personal presentation by using a candid photo of yourself, like what singer Selena Gomez does for her account.
This encourages people to interact with you more since they get to see what you actually look like, with a bit of personality beyond the standard poser three quarter photo.
Changing your profile image routinely also helps keep that initial curiosity going. You can switch pictures to match the current trends in your niche or use your new profile picture to tease something new about the page. Make sure that your new profile picture is consistent with your page aesthetic to ensure recognition.
3. Write an engaging bio
Despite the site being a visual platform, having a well-written profile bio is still essential for Instagram optimization. When writing your profile bio, you should have an idea of what it will be used for, like:
- Telling people what the page is about
- Providing contact details
- Inserting links to websites and relevant pages
Remember that you only have 150 characters to work with, so you should convey your most important information concisely.
Don’t just stick with writing the “hard” facts. Show your personality by writing your bio in the appropriate manner. Photographer Chris Burkard does that in a very short, but witty, bio.
Don’t hesitate to use emojis and custom fonts to highlight that persona. Add line breaks to make your bio easier to read for visitors wanting to know more about you.
4. Deliver high-quality photos
Planning the overall theme and style of your Instagram page is essential to ensure a steady stream of high-quality photos. Decide on the photo subjects that you would want to focus on. You should also choose shots that would best fit your overall style.
Editing and enhancing your images
To make your photos more effective in catching people’s interest, spend time editing them. Use tools like Photoshop to adjust the quality of the image and bring out details you want to highlight. You can even take this further and add unique effects to the photos, but don’t overdo it, as people might be turned off by heavily edited images.
Using filters is another way to enhance your photos. The site itself offers a variety of filters to use. You can also use apps like VSCO for more options.
Create a consistent filter scheme for your page by choosing only two or three different filters and adding them to the right photos.
5. Control your hashtag use
An effective way to control your hashtag use is by limiting the number of tags you add to your posts. Choose only 4-5 popular hashtags relevant to your specific niche. This prevents your post from looking spammy and lets you catch the interest of a specific audience better.
Strategizing on how you use these hashtags also helps make them more effective at bringing people to your page. Don’t just drop your tags at the end of captions. You should instead incorporate them into your text in a more natural manner, like what Starbucks frequently does.
People become more interested in your content if they see you using the hashtags they follow in a more informative context.
Adding your hashtags to other places is another good optimization tactic. Some of these places are:
- Your bio: This is a good place for general hashtags related to your page.
- Instagram Stories: Use the Hashtag stickers to insert tags and make your Stories more discoverable while adding to their visual appeal.
- Within your images/videos: People take better notice of your hashtag if they see it being used within the content they are viewing.
When people see your hashtags in different places on your page they have more chances to become more familiar with and adopt them faster, increasing your popularity.
6. Add variety to your content repertoire
Aside from photos, Instagram also supports other content types. Using them for your content lets you offer something new to keep people invested in your page. Some content types to explore are:
- Videos: Aside from 60-second clips, you can also create longer videos using IGTV.
- Instagram Stories: The feature can be used in a variety of ways to keep your followers entertained with your page.
- GIFs and boomerang images: Both types of moving images can be substitutes for videos if you want more dynamic content.
- Carousels: They are great for doing visual storytelling since you can add multiple images to a post.
Decide which types of content would best fit your page and study how you can adapt them further. Using the same aesthetic as your images is one of the ways to accomplish this.
Leveraging user-generated content
You don’t even have to limit yourself to your own content. User-generated content coming from your followers is a great way to fill your galleries. It’s also effective for getting them more invested in your page since they get to see their work posted.
To encourage follower participation, you should make the call for UGC’s fun. Doing contests like this one are a common means of getting people to submit their work.
You can also do a call based on a trending event they are interested in.
7. Buy Instagram likes and shares
Getting more engagements to boost the popularity of your page is often a slow process. To speed that up, you can buy different Instagram signals. This tactic works for both new and established IG users who want to solidify their popularity.
To get the most out of your purchase, plan it accordingly. Decide on which kinds of signals to buy for your specific needs. Instagram likes and shares, for example, are useful for quickly spreading your latest posts. You should also think about how many to get so that your post engagement growth looks natural and convincing.
8. Converse with people in the comments section
Getting people to comment more on your posts both keeps them interested in your page and increase its popularity. To achieve both, set some time to read through the latest ones you receive and respond to them.
Make your conversations with followers more engaging by sharing plenty of useful info. This could be more detailed answers to their questions or other bits of info that you think they will like. Encourage them to keep asking more to create a continuing discussion.
9. Take advantage of influencers
Interacting with influencers within your niche will help you reach out to new audiences, but you should know how to connect with them the right way. Follow them to get an idea of the audience they cater to and comment on their posts to catch their attention. Once they start noticing you, you can gradually pitch for them to feature you.
When deciding on which influencer to reach out to, it would be a good idea to focus on micro influencers, or those that have fewer than 30,000 followers, like this one.
Since they have a smaller audience, they engage with that audience in a more personal manner. This gives your page a better chance of being successfully promoted to that audience.
10. Engage other accounts
Instagram optimization is not limited to engaging the people that visit your page. Going out and engaging other accounts is also important for optimizing your presence on Instagram. This is a great way to discover new audiences.
The trick here is to interact with other accounts in a natural manner. Look for the ones you are personally interested in. Explore their accounts and engage with at least three pieces of content that you like. This tells the account owner that you appreciate their work on a deeper level, increasing their interest in you. Once you established that rapport, the other account might be willing to encourage their audience to check out your page, or their audience may just see you on their own and check you out.
Follow these optimization tips to grow your Instagram account
Instagram optimization is an essential strategy to accelerate your page’s growth. To recap, there are three main types of optimization you should do:
- Profile optimization: Switch to a business profile for greater functionality and make it more attractive by adding an eye-catching profile photo and engaging bio.
- Content optimization: Keep your audiences interested in your page by constantly delivering various types of high-quality content.
- Increased engagement: Interact with your page visitors and the larger Instagram community to make yourself more prominent.
When done right, these optimization tips will let you attract new followers and strengthen your presence. Combine these tips with other effective marketing tactics and you are on your way to becoming an Instagram hit.
Date: January 7, 2019 / Categories: Follower Tactics, Guide, Uncategorized, / Author: Rich Drees
